Wednesday, 6 April 2011

Integrity

Laria was pleased, in general. Everything seemed to be going rather well, at least on the "mining vast quantities of plagioclase" front, and they certainly weren't going badly on the "serving drinks" front either.

There were, of course, a few minor issues. Some of the types that came into the bar stretched "roguish" to breaking point, and she rather felt that her vague "be polite and reclaim them for the side of righteousness" plan was avoiding the issue rather than a cunning solution.

There was also a nagging doubt that itched in the back of her head. This quest for sassiness had really taken shape after her last neural remap, and after she had installed some of her current implants. If her personality, as well as her ability to process information, could be changed via artificial means, and her current body was potentially replaceable at any point, what part of her was... /her/. What part of her was incontestably Laria, rather than Laria+implants, or Laria+boosted intelligence.

And did it actually matter? If she learnt something today, then in a small way that made her a different person from yesterday. If she was forever changing anyway, like a river slowly moving to the sea, then the big changes were just waterfalls. It was still the same river.

Yet... she didn't much like that. It felt too impermanent, too amorphous. There had to be some anchor, somewhere.

She frowned, and kicked back onto her bunk. What she needed was some way to record important parts of who she was. Things that mattered. And then she could always go back and at least touch them, ground herself back in who she was.

Once a week. That was about the right level. She reached for her datapad and allocated a station container to it, naming it "Laria's Hall Of Memories." There. That was a good start, and of course the container was, itself, a memento. "One," she said, aloud. She moved a mining laser that she had kicking about in her "Reprocess" container into it. There. Laria the miner, and the habitual classifier of things. Now, what could she put into it next?